Review: Rachel Podger Plays Bach for Flute With Her Violin

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Rachel Podger, the Baroque violinist played works from Bach, Tartini and Heinrich von Biber at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.CreditTatyana Tenenbaum

By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim

June 15, 2015

As a rule, violinists rarely pilfer foreign repertory. They don’t need to. With so much first-rate music written for the violin, the motivation to adapt and transcribe works written for other instruments is low. So why did Rachel Podger, one of the leading performers on the Baroque violin, open her masterly recital at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on Sunday with Bach’s Partita in A minor for solo flute, transposed into the key of G minor? Because when it comes to Bach, Ms. Podger told the audience, “You can’t get enough.”

A good thing, too: With her warm, resiny sound, expressive command of rhythm and gift for drawing melodic lines of alpine crispness, Ms. Podger can be entrusted with just about anything. The audience laughed when she said she was looking for ways to adapt Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” for herself — but I wouldn’t bet against it.

Without the double and triple stops that anchor Bach’s writing for solo violin, his Partita for flute relies on clarity of phrasing to create the illusion of a harmonic architecture. Armed with a vast arsenal of bow strokes, Ms. Podger was able to chisel each line with meticulous deliberation and care. Her ornaments are just as varied, ranging from a subtle flattening of pitch on certain emphasized notes to trills of heart-quickening spontaneity and brilliance.

Tartini’s proud but dark Sonata in B minor, No. 13 (B:h1), showed Ms. Podger’s facility with the flashy Italian style. But the two most expressive works turned out to be the last on the program, Heinrich von Biber’s Passacaglia in G minor from the “Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas” and Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin. Unexpectedly, it was the first that became a meditation on sorrow and hope while the Bach — including the magisterial Chaconne — came alive in a light and fresh reading.

Biber’s work, inscribed with the title “Guardian Angel,” is built on a melancholic series of four descending bass notes, which become the blueprint for a series of dazzling variations full of upward rushing flights of scales. The work ends on a major chord, which Ms. Podger rendered with transfixing mystery.

The dance movements of Bach’s Partita in D showed off Ms. Podger’s elegant sense of rhythm, the Gigue so quick that its arpeggios sounded like refracted light flashing off a spinning object. In the Chaconne, she created vivid contrasts in mood between sections, including double stops so feathery and pianissimos so cool and clean that this work, which so often commands respect for its monumental grandeur, came across as experimental and free.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Bach for Violin, Transposed and Composed . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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